Matter of the Heart | Better Together | Chris Hodges

2:48 stay standing for just a minute and let me greet you and let me say thank you to Pastor Jensen it's always an incredible honor to be in this pulpit. It's kind of, it's the only place probably I get a little nervous because this is the place that I watch every week. I actually go to church on Mondays, everybody. I've watched some sermons, and this is the first place I go. Can we show some love to Pastor Jensen, everybody? He's probably watching. Come on, let him hear you.

3:16 It's awesome. And stay staying again, everybody. And let me look straight into the camera and say hello to all the locations at Free Chapel and to those that are watching online. Can you show some love to your church family that just happens? Come on to be on the other side of the camera. God bless you guys. And one more time, I know I got you clapping a lot, but you guys do know that there are people in the room right now who are here for the very first time. And I think we ought to show some great love to everybody here. Come on. Yeah. We're so glad you came. I'm going to do my best, but you come back next week, and you'll hear a real preacher, everybody, all right? How about we open up our hands and receive from God today? Father, we thank you for the power of your presence. Lord, we're so grateful for the authority of your word, and Lord, right now, God, we're making room in our hearts for you to do something, and God, we have trust issues. All of us do. I know I do, God, but we trust you, Lord, and we'll let you in, and we trust you to touch us in ways that we never dreamed, and Lord, we've given you a room Lord have your will and have your way we pray and we give you all the thanks in Jesus name and the church said a good all right high five your neighbor tell him do you always look this good come on tell him just tell him I think that brother there just got a date congratulations sir all right I'm glad to be here again and I'm very delighted to be in the better together series I I do like talking about marriage and family.

4:46 And I stopped talking about parenting after I had kids. Come on, somebody, everybody, right? They say when you're in your 20s, if you're a preacher, you preach on parenting. And in your 50s, you preach on prayer. Come on, everybody, right? So I stopped. I'm going to let God take care of the kids. Anyway, we do have five kids, and I know that's a lot. I always get a reaction, five kids. In fact, I was just preaching in California, and this guy came up to me at the end. And I don't know why he did this, but I had mentioned how many kids I have. And he goes, my God, five kids. You must really like kids. And I said, no, sir, I don't. Actually, that's not why. I love my wife. Come on, everybody, right? So you got that all wrong. But anyway, so. And I have to make one correction. We don't have eight grandkids. We have nine and one on the way. Come on, everybody. I know. Now, that's the best part of life. If you all don't have grandkids yet, listen to me. This is great advice. Don't kill your kids.

5:38 better ones are coming, everybody. Come on, just hang in there. Just let them live. Trust me. It is awesome. And again, I'm thrilled to be in this series with you today. I have an interesting thought, and I think it's going to lead us to a ministry moment. I'm not really a classic preacher. I'm more of a teacher. I like taking complicated things, putting it in a way that's very, very simple so everybody can grab it. I've got one of the best compliments of my life in our church. When a lady came up to me, she says, Pastor, you put the cookies on the bottom shelf so everybody can have one. And that's what I wanna do today. I wanna take some complicated thoughts and make it very applicable. And by the way, the reason why I do that is I'm not very smart, okay, everybody? I kinda have to do it that way. I'm not from Alabama. I'm a Cajun from South Louisiana, all right, everybody? Yeah, and I say that as a disclaimer that you might not learn anything, but we are gonna have a good time, everybody, all right? I promise you.

6:30 We always say if you can't have fun with a person from Louisiana, it's your fault, all right? So here we go. So I do want to talk about relationships, and I want to give you this thought about conflict. So all of us have conflict. All of us have fights. In fact, y'all want to hear a Boudreaux joke about a fight? Everybody, y'all want to hear that? Yes or no? Yeah? Okay. Boudreaux, by the way, is the stereotypical Cajun. It's the most common last name in Louisiana. It's kind of like Smith, Boudreaux and Thibodeau. Anyway, we tell these crazy little Boudreaux jokes, but Boudreaux decided he was going to go to a husband conference where only husbands go to learn how to, you know, get their wives just kind of, you know, line up a little bit. Now, this is a joke. Don't get mad at me. This is just a joke. Okay. And so he met a guy from California and New York, and they said, hey, let's go home and try everything we learned. And then when we get back after a couple of weeks, let's call each other and compare notes and see if it worked. So they got on the phone two weeks later, and the guy from New York said, man, I'm gonna tell you, I went home and I told my wife, darling, things are going to have to change around here. You need to cook more, clean more, take care of these kids.

7:35 He said, I didn't see nothing the first day. I didn't see nothing the second day. And by the third day, she was doing everything they taught me. They said, oh my goodness, that's amazing. And then the guy from California spoke up. He said, man, same thing for me. I went home. I said, lady, you're going to have to do better. You have to cook more, clean more, take care of these kids. He said, man, I didn't see nothing the first day. I didn't see nothing the second day. And third day, she was doing everything that I learned in the seminar. They said, Boudreaux, how did it work out for you. He said, well, I went home and told Marie, things are going to have to change around here. You have to cook more clean there, take care of these kids. He said, I didn't see nothing the first day. I didn't see nothing the second day. He said, the third day, I could see a little out of my left eye. Anyway, so don't write that down. That's not good at all, right? So, but it is funny. I don't care what y'all say. That's hilarious. I want to talk about something. Let me give you the idea behind it first.

8:28 And that is whenever you're in any type of a conflict, whether it's with your kids or at the office or with your spouse or whatever it is, it's very, very easy just to focus on the circumstances of the conflict. Like that's the problem. The problem is you didn't do what I asked you to or you did this too much. So we really focused on that. And I wanna give you a thought. I wonder if a lot of the things that we're facing really don't have to do with what's going on in that moment. I wonder if there's a lot of things that are happening because of a heart condition. In other words, and I'm not talking about your physical heart. I'm just talking about that you're actually living your life through a filter of things that happened years ago. What if some of the ways that we react or respond or don't respond are because of some heart issues? And the Bible is very vocal on this topic. In fact, in Proverbs chapter four, it says, above all else, that's kind of a strong verse. Above all else, my goodness, above all else, like guard your heart for out of it.

9:25 One translation says flows all the issues of life. It's everything that you're doing is coming out of this heart filter. Even Jesus, when he would dress, he was asked one time, it was intended to be a trick question and they asked him about divorce and they said, you know, can a man and woman get divorced? And he basically said Moses permitted it because we have hard hearts. So the divorce wasn't the issue. The reason why it had to be allowed is because there's some things going on the inside. Not on the screen, just a verse that's popping in my mind right now. In Ephesians chapter one, Paul's praying for the church. And he prays, he said, my first prayer is that all of you just, I wish you could know God better. And the second line in the prayer, this is in Ephesians chapter one, he says, and I also pray that the eyes of your heart are enlightened. And what in the world does that mean? Because your eyes don't on your heart. And what if they actually are?

10:18 What if you're actually not looking through these, and you're actually looking through everything that's happened to you up to this point? What if we really are the sum total of not only the people that we've experienced, but all the experiences we've had? What if all that's in there? And so that's why in this room right now, all of you are seeing the exact same thing, but seeing it differently. Why? Because we're looking through a filter of our heart. And so if that's the case, then we're bringing that filter, good or bad, by the way, into every experience, every fight, every situation. How do we get better together? I think it's a matter of the heart. That's the title of the message. I think it's a matter of the heart. I think we've got to decide that we're going to deal with some things here. I want to show you a verse. It's very, very interesting in Exodus chapter 28. If you have a Bible, you can look at it, or we'll put it up on the screen for you, of course. And this is the part of the scriptures where they're still in the Exodus. So Moses and the children of Israel, of course, crossed the Red Sea, came out of Egypt.

11:15 Of course, they get the Ten Commandments. And if you know anything about the story, now they're going to do this wandering thing in the desert for 40 years while they're learning some lessons. Because they're traveling, he's a cloud by day, fire by night, God is. They never knew when he was moving. So whenever God moved, they had to follow him. So they had to set up what I call portable church. It was the set up and take down church. It was called the tabernacle when it was portable. And it was called the temple when it became permanent. Anyway, so they're in this portable church situation, right? And you saw this last week in the message where they had these pieces of furniture. One of them was the Ark of the Covenant. And anyway, they had to move all of this. And so they had to have priests who actually basically did church. And they called them priests in the Old Testament. New Testament says we all are. We all are our kingdom of priests. There aren't two different classes. Come on, everybody.

12:06 We all get access to God, get close to God, can know God, can minister to people. Yeah, that's a good message by itself. But in the Old Testament, the priest had to get dressed. And in Exodus 28, they're talking about what the priest wore. And there was things like they had this turban, which was really basically a tall hat that had this gold plate on the front that crossed right in front of your mind that said, holy to the Lord. And it was a symbol of, make sure you're guarding your mind with holiness because the devil will come after it. And they all have all these symbols in them. They wore an undergarment, like underwear, but it wasn't like our underwear. It was like an undergarment of linen. And they said that's because the priest was never supposed to sweat. Ministry was supposed to be easy. He actually had this outer garment that there was this blue, long flowing robe. It's kind of like a Santa Claus robe, except it's not red, it's blue. And Josephus, the extra biblical writer, said there were 72 bells.

13:00 The Bible says there were bells. It just doesn't say how many. But Josephus said it was 72 bells that were sewn at the hymn. He was jingling all the way, everybody, all right? And that was because the priest was always supposed to come in with joy and supposed to leave ministry with joy. And that kind of gives us a picture of that. But there's one other part of what the priest had to wear that I want to show us today. It's fascinating to me. And I want you to notice the language in the text, and I'll describe it first and we'll read the text. So it was called the breast piece of decision. And it was something you tied around your neck. It was one of the last things you would put on because it would be on the outside. And it was kind of square like this. and it was like a plate that names were written across it. And it was the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. And if you didn't know any better, you would think, oh, it's just to remember the guys that started this whole process, right?

13:54 We're gonna remember the tribes of Israel. But it's actually bigger than that. And hint, it's in the name, the breast piece of decision. So let's look at the text together. It says, whenever Aaron enters the holy place, and that's the place where the Ark of the Covenant was, he will bear the names of the sons of Israel. Notice where they are. They're over his, and here's my topic today, over your heart, on the breast piece of decision as a continuing memorial before the Lord. Thus, Aaron will always bear, watch this, the means of making decisions for the Israelites over his heart before the Lord. In other words, he's making decisions based on what's written on his heart. And my question to you is, what's on your heart? And could it be that you're making your decisions and acting like you are who you are in your family and a job and all that because of what's written there?

14:51 And I wonder if there's something written there that's not supposed to be there. And now it is this filter that you're making all these decisions. He's making decisions based on what's written in his heart. Now, this is my story. I was actually raised in church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My parents were very big, faithful Baptist people. Mom sang in the choir. Dad played the organ. It's on this side, which we sat right here about seven rows back with my grandmother. And that was so dad could keep an eye on us. I hated church. We were there every Sunday. My preacher talked about hell like he was born and raised in hell. Come on, everybody, right? And he always pointed over there, you know, like right at me, like, oh. So when I was seven, I walked the aisle. I was seven years old and I walked the aisle because of the communion table and everything, and God saved, and I didn't get saved. I just didn't want to go to hell. You know, I was seven, but I ain't stupid. But anyway, still didn't like church for a long time, but I'm 61.

15:47 I've never missed a Sunday in church in my life to date. But when I was 15, I got radically saved, but I wasn't radically healed. So I'm going to heaven, but I still have issues because when I was in junior high, I was bullied quite a bit. But we changed sides of town right in the middle of when I was going through puberty. And it was a hard time for me. So I had no friends. And I ended up in a PE class of, they didn't have room. I was in eighth grade and they didn't have any more room in the eighth grade class. They put me in the ninth grade class. And these were like fully grown men in this class, right? You know, I'm there, hey, guys. You know, like I was just, and they pulled my shorts down. They actually tied me to the fence with their jackets. I know like pick me up, hail me up. Like I'm off the ground, legs dangling, use their coats to tie me to the fence. And then the bell rang to go to the next period. And I'm stuck. I'm on the fence. And then the coach, the coach comes out and says, Hodges, what are you doing? And I just said, I was trying to be funny. I was trying to lighten them up. I was like, hanging around coach. You're like, hey, yo. And, uh, and he pulled me down and paddled me.

16:53 Like he, he took me to his office and paddled me. He says, you're causing, you're causing trouble with all the guys, aren't you? Like, no, sir. Like, they did this to me. And it marked, it scarred, like stuff got written. And I'm only telling you this because I'm wondering what happened to you? Like, what is in your story? You may be your saved going to heaven, but there's some stuff written there, right? And now it's a filter that's become your breast piece of decision. You're making decisions based on not the situation, not on the fact that she was late or he was, you know, he didn't pick up his clothes. It's not that. It's something else that's going on in your heart, right? And I just want us to look at it a little bit and see if that's not the case. And so as I'm going on, I end up at LSU. Didn't know what I wanted to be. And I'm about four years saved, radically saved. But my dad was in finance, so I was an accounting major.

17:49 And I'm good with math and money and all of that. But I was trying to pass. I'm not a very smart guy. I'm making C's on my best day. Where are my C's people at, by the way? Encourage your brother up there. Thank you very much. Love you back. Love you back. Where are the A people at? A people, A people? We're not crazy about you. Just not crazy about you. Stay home once in a while. You're messing up the curve, everybody. So that's true. You really are.

18:14 In fact, I have to pause and tell you guys, we have a daughter and four sons, and my oldest son is real smart. Like, he made a 33 on the ACT, got a full-ride academic scholarship to Alabama, finished a four-year degree in three years, went on to get an MBA. Now he has his MDiv. I mean, like he's smart. And so anyway, we were in the kitchen one day when he got his final report card from high school in the mail. And so he opened it. I'll never forget this. And he opened it up and he goes, Dad, look at there. Look, look, look, look. All A's again. I never made a B in my whole life. I said, that ain't nothing. I never made a B in my whole life either. Just shut up. Just get on out of here. I don't need to talk to you. Just move on. You just can move on, right?

18:58 And so I'm, that is funny. I was living with this like inferiority complex because it was something that was written on my heart. You're dumb. And so I was acting it out. I was trying everything to try to make up for it by entertaining people. I was the guy who would take the dare. I'm getting in a lot of trouble because of that. But I'm living out of a decision. I have names that are written on my heart that are the means by which I am now living my life and making my decisions until I get spirit-filled and God starts to work in my life, and slowly things begin to change. And the bad names and the bad experiences get unwritten off my heart, and the good names and good people and good scriptures and good processes started getting written on my heart. And I'll just tell you up front, it won't happen in a moment. Sometimes it does. People just get radically changed, just one alter moment.

19:52 But most times it's this process where we're actually transformed by the power of God. My father-in-law, who was my best friend in the whole world, he unfortunately died at 61 years old with melanoma. Little tumor on the bottom of his foot that four doctors misdiagnosed. And anyway, when they figured out what it was, it wasn't long after that he went to heaven. But he was a hero to me. I mean, he actually introduced me to my wife. And I flat out, that's the nice way to put it. He proposed to me, y'all. All right, everybody? Okay. They were missionaries in Germany. I'm bringing students over there. And one day he just said, have you ever considered my daughter Tammy? I said, no, sir, haven't. He goes, I'd like you to take her out. I'd like anything for you. I'm happy to do it. And anyway, we fell in love and got married just a few months later. But his story is when he was in eighth grade, they grew up Catholic.

20:46 He really didn't know the Lord. in eighth grade, super, super smart. And the math teacher calls him to the chalkboard to do a math problem. So the teacher writes it out and draws the line and said, Hornsby, come up here and do this problem. And of course, the teacher wants him to go through the whole process of figuring it out like you're supposed to do with math. He is so smart without doing any of the, putting numbers up at the top and figuring it all out. He figures it out while he's walking up. So he walks up and just writes the answer and turns around, goes back to his seat. And the teacher said, that's wrong. He said, no, ma'am, that's right. He said, it's right, but you didn't show your work. I hated that part of math. You didn't show your work. He said, it doesn't matter. I got it right. Now, he shouldn't have talked to her that way, okay? And this is back, this is a while ago. You didn't talk to your teachers like that.

21:40 And it made her mad. And she pointed her finger in his face and said, you'll never amount to anything. and it got written. Now, that's not a big statement, but sometimes it is. And in his case, he started living out, you'll never amount to anything. He checked out of school, not physically, but never mentally or emotionally ever went back. Ends up dropping out. Two years later at 15, he's sneaking out in the middle of the night trying to make a little money to go play in bars, country music in bars at 15 years old. At one o'clock in the morning, parents didn't even know. He's living this crazy, chaotic life. because he'll never amount to anything. Gets his girlfriend pregnant. She ends up being my mother-in-law. That baby born out of wedlock is my wife. And they were 17 years old. 18 years old, they get married.

22:32 They have two other little girls very, very quickly. So he's 21 years old with three little girls and never will amount to anything. Now he needs money, but he then has no education. And in Baton Rouge, if you want a job, you go to one of the chemical refineries. A third of all employees in Baton Rouge area are working in one of those refineries along the Mississippi River. And so he goes to Exxon, but it'll never amount to anything. And he fills out the test. And when he turns in, he says, hey, don't even bother calling me back. And he walks out. He said, well, we'll let you know how it turns out in two days. Two days later, the examiner calls and said, Mr. Hornsby, come in. We wanna talk to you about your results. And he says, don't bother. just tell me I failed because he'll never amount to anything. They said, no, sir, please come in if you don't mind. And when he got there, they said, Mr. Hornsby, no one has ever scored higher on this test than you just did.

23:28 And the examiner said, and if you put your mind to it, you'll really amount to something someday. And said the very opposite of what the math teacher said, that he broke the curse. He reversed the curse. Are y'all with me, church? All right. he checks in, bam, becomes very, very successful, gets saved, spirit-filled, becomes a state trooper, was bodyguard for the governor, went to three FBI hand-to-hand combat schools, ends up planting a church in North Louisiana, planted churches all over Europe, and became the founder of what is called the Association of Related Churches that has now planted more than 1,200 churches all across America. Boy, he really ended up amounting to something someday, right, is the point. And best of all, he became the father-in-law of Chris Hodges. No, I'm just kidding. But the point, what I'm trying to say is I wonder how many of us are living out something that's been written on our hearts because it's this breast piece of decision.

24:29 I'll show you one more story before I kind of get to the solution. I hope I have your attention on all of this, but I'll show you one other story. It's a fascinating story. It's the story of someone you likely don't know anything about in the Bible. You know his son real well. His son is Abraham. Probably not very many people in the room. There's some that probably can who can even name me who Abraham's daddy is. His name is Terah. There's one chapter in the Bible on Abraham's dad. Okay? And I have a theory, and you don't have to believe it. It's just a theory. I think the original call that ended up on Abraham's life to be the father of many nations, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I think it was not on Abraham. I think it was on his daddy. I think, honestly, Abraham was the plan B. It's just a theory. You don't have to agree with me. Okay? In fact, I think it was supposed to be Terah, Abraham, and Isaac. God is the father. And I'm gonna show you why I believe that. And can you just go with me? Either way, it's a great story. Okay, I think you'll enjoy it.

25:21 It says in verse 27, this is the account of Terah. Terah became the father of three boys, Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Notice with me that the baby in the family is named Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. Watch this verse very carefully. While his father, Terah, was still alive, Haran dies, so the baby's gone. So we know it's premature because everybody older is still alive. So either by disease or by accident, the baby in the family is suddenly dead. And anybody who's ever experienced that knows how painful something like that can be. And he dies in a city called Ur. You are, and it's in the land of the Chaldeans. Skip down to verse 31. It says, Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. Now that's the part where I get the theory. The only thing that's missing in the text for me to be 100% right is this for it to say God sent them. All we know is just one day, Terah wakes up and said, family, pack your bags. We're leaving Ur and we're going to Canaan. Canaan would end up being the promised land. Okay. Sorry. Is everybody with me? Yes or no? You're with me. Okay. So they set out from the Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. So between where they were, look up here for a second, where they were and where they were going was a city that just so happened to have the same name as the dead baby boy.

27:03 so in order to get from where he was to his promised land he had to pass through his greatest relational wound and when he got there he never left there he settled there and the next verse is a horrible verse here it says that terah lived 205 years and died with the same thing written on his heart he couldn't get past that and so he never got to his canaan and that's where we get the famous verses that you do know, where God says, okay, I still need somebody to go be this. So then God calls Abram. He says, why don't you leave? Because it doesn't even make sense. If you know the text, he says, leave your family. Like if you're going to be a great nation, why would you leave your family? It's because they were settled in their relational wound. They were settled in, are y'all following me, everybody? This is an incredible thought that we had this problem sometimes with what's happened to us, what people have done to us, what we've done to ourselves, with our wounds, our hurts, our names.

28:08 For me, it was inferior. You're inferior. I'm inferior. I lived with that even in ministry for years. You're inferior. You're a C student from Louisiana. And y'all, Louisiana's 50th on every list there is. Maybe 49. Thank God for Arkansas. Come on, somebody, right? I don't know. I don't know. All I know is if you're in the bottom of the 50th state, you're in the very bottom, bottom, right? And that was a name I lived. They said, you'll never do anything either. And so some of us, we have some things we're living out, but they need to get erased, everyone. Can I get a better amen out there? We need to deal with some of these issues because it's a matter of the heart. So what do we do about it? Let me bring it to a close by giving you a verse that I want to unpack slowly because I'm more of a teacher than a preacher. And so I've asked the team to put it lower thirds and leave it up there and let me just teach it to you.

29:02 And it goes like this. It's in 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18. And it says, but we all, and I'm gonna stop right there. So this is an all play. In other words, I think all of us have something like that. I think if we had time to talk to every one of you, you could tell us what name, what person, what experience, what thing is there that has become your filter that you are now making decisions that's affecting relationships. And you think she's the problem, and it's not. You think he's the problem, and he's not. It's this thing. And that's why it says, so we all need to play this. We all, and the next line says, with unveiled face. That's a fancy Bible way to say you have access to God. The veil was the thing that kept people and God separated because we had sin. But then Jesus came, the Bible says, and when he breathed his last breath on the cross, the veil was torn, and we no longer had to earn our way back to God. you have direct access to God. Take five seconds and give a Jensen Franklin praise break, everybody.

29:59 All right. All right. And by the way, you don't have to earn it because all your sins are paid for past, present, and future. Best thing you've ever heard all day long. I promise you that. Okay. Okay. So we all have direct access to God. It says, and we are now beholding as in a mirror. In other words, when you are close to God, what he will do is he'll give you a mirror. I call it a mirror moment. It's a moment where you're going to see some things. But when you look in God's mirror, you don't see you. So all of you got up this morning and you stood in front of the mirror, hopefully, and checked your face and your teeth and your hair. And what you saw is who you are. When you look in God's mirror, you do not see who you are. You see who you can be. He tells you what's on the other side of all the things that are written on your heart. For me, it was, I mean, like, y'all, when I went at LSU my sophomore year, I failed my speech class.

30:56 I was an accounting major, and I had to take speech. And y'all, I failed, not at the University of Connecticut, at LSU, y'all, all right? They don't even speak English there. I failed speech at LSU, okay. And then look what I do for a living. So I was failing in something when God saw something else. and I'm already saved, right? But I'm still failing something that was actually a potential and a purpose for me. And that's what God do. Look at my eyes and God will give you mirror moments. He'll say, you know, this is what your marriage could look like. This is what your attitude could look like. And you say, no, no, no, I can't. My daddy was mean. My granddaddy was mean. My great granddaddy was mean. We just mean people. No, no, no, no. you can have some, come on somebody, you can have some mirror moments where he says, no, no, no, this is what you can look like. Beholding us in a mirror. What are we seeing? The glory of the Lord. The word glory is the word kabod in the Hebrew, and it literally translates the full weight of who God is. In other words, it's your full potential. Let me say it this way, you have full potential and it looks different what it looks like right now.

32:05 and you can still have it. And what God does, he'll give you glimpses of it in different moments, in church services, small groups, whatever, that's what all of this is for. This isn't so you can check your Sunday box. It's for the potential for there to be a mirror moment where you go, wow, and it can happen in worship, it can happen in prayer, it can happen, okay, but you'll get these. And it's not what you look like, it's what you could look like. It's the full weight of who God is. and when it happens, comma, red verses again, we are being transformed. So now change can take place. That's what the word transform means. By the way, the essence of the gospel is we're changed. That gets resisted in this culture today. People want to go to heaven, but they don't wanna change. I had a girl come up to me several weeks ago after one of our services and I was hanging out at the front here and she said, hey, this is my first time.

33:03 She's probably 20 something. Hey, my first time, I love it, it was so great. She goes, I just got one question. She goes, if I keep coming back, are you gonna try to change me? And I said, oh yes, we are, absolutely. Everything about you. And I hope it changes me. We're not in this just to be forgiven and stay who we are. Come on, church, we're here to be changed in the presence of Almighty God. I'd be still failing my speech class if God hadn't changed me.

33:33 Of course. So open up your life to change. We all who have this direct access with God are gonna get some mirror moments where you can see who you can become and you can be changed into the same image you saw in the mirror. So all the potential. When I say to you, your marriage can be the marriage everybody else looks at and models. That's a mirror moment where you can say, true, and I'm gonna allow God to change me to that moment. I can treat people like the best. We're teaching the song of Solomon right now at Highlands. And woo, it's spicy. And it's really great. It's great. But the whole book starts with, she's saying to Solomon, you are the standard of human love. Nobody treats people better than you. And I told our church last Sunday, I wanna be that person.

34:25 I wanna say, I want them to look at my marriage and look at how I treat people and say, there's no equal, the way you treat people, your joy, your peace, your laughter, your forgiveness. We're gonna set that as an example. That can happen when you allow God to change you into that image. Somebody say amen right there. I think this is so great. I get so fired up. And it happens from glory to glory. That means, watch me, church, it's incremental. It can happen all in one moment. Those are rare, though. But they happen from glory to glory to glory. So now I've known the Lord for a long time now. I'm 61. I got saved at 15. And the transformation is still beginning. And I'm still not where I want to be. But thank God I'm not where I used to be. It's glory to glory to glory to glory. All right, you're getting it. And that's why you need to come back next Sunday. And you need to bring somebody to sit with you in church. And I think next Sunday we're going to have the renewal of vows.

35:18 And like let's just keep going from glory to glory to glory to glory to glory. That's what it's all about. And it happens by, look at the final part, by the Spirit of God. The word spirit is the word pneuma, P-N-E-U-M-A, like pneumonia. Okay, I don't know why the P is silent. It just is. Okay? And it's pneuma, and it means the breath or the force or the power of God. He'll put wind in your sails to be able to do it. So everybody in this room right now who's saying, I can't do it, you're right. But you can if the spirit of God gets involved and propels you all the way. And that's what that verse says, all right? You got it, don't you? I know you do. Okay. So I want to close with a story that I heard from the pastor of this house, Pastor Jensen. Actually, because I go to church on Mondays, I was watching him preach. And I have told this story in this moment. In fact, I texted him.

36:10 I said, when's the last time you told this story at Free Chapel? He said, probably seven years ago. I said, you mind if I retell it? He goes, help yourself. There's a lot of new people. So if you've been around a while, seven years or more, you probably know this story. If not, this will be new to you. But Pastor Jensen told this story. It's a true story. about a lady named Marina Chapman, who some 60, 70 years ago now was a little four-year-old girl in Bogota, Colombia, or the nation of Colombia in South America. Their house bordered the jungle, and so she's out playing in the backyard at four years old, and she gets abducted. And a man, all she remembers, because she writes this in a best-selling book, National Geographic has done documentaries on it. This has all been verified. but she was tied, hands behind back, hooded. He used some kind of chemical to take her in and out of consciousness.

37:04 She vividly, one of her vivid memories is being drug into the jungle and the little branches cutting her little arms and legs. And he drags her deep into the jungle, has his way with her in every way you can imagine and then leaves her for dead. He leaves. She somehow is able to get her hands untied and of course the hood off. She remembers, I'm gonna stay right here because somebody will find me if I won't go anywhere from here. And then night falls. And she talks vividly about the horrors of that night, the monkeys and the insects. You can only imagine. It'd be hard as an adult, much less a four-year-old little girl who just was violated in every way.

37:48 And so the day comes for the second day and she's sure somebody's coming and nobody does. And she said, in some ways, even though all that happened on the first night, the second night was the worst because she realized nobody's coming. Nobody's coming. Third day rolls around and a troop of monkeys come out and they were kind of hostile toward her at first, you know, growling at her. And when they realized that she was not gonna hurt them, they relaxed and started foraging for food right there around her. She remembers one of them licking a leaf that had dew on it. And that's how, copying the monkey, that's how she got her first drops of water. She doesn't know if they did it on purpose or not, but when they left, they left food. And that was her first meal, that third night. The next day they came back, same kind of story.

38:42 But those three or four days turned into a week. And the week turned into a month. And are you ready for this? the month turned into a year and the year turned into 10 years before she was ever rescued. She's now 14 years old and she's been hanging with the monkeys and she can, you know, somewhat communicate with grunts and growls. She learned from them. She went through all her formative years in the jungle. And by this time, watch this, she thinks she's one of them. She actually learns how to a certain degree climb trees, obviously not to the level of a monkey, but she would climb the trees, sleep in the trees. She's literally living what had been now branded on her heart. She thinks she's one of them until one day she sees something in the jungle floor when she was up in the trees, climbs down, and it had eyes. And the closer she got, she realized those eyes were hers because it was a mirror that was left in the jungle floor.

39:50 And when she picked it up and looked at it, she didn't know who she was yet, but she knew who she wasn't. She had a mirror moment. She had a moment where she said, maybe I can have a good marriage. Maybe I can treat people better. Maybe I can. And she didn't know yet how she was gonna get there, obviously, but she did say this, that once she had the mirror moment, she was never satisfied with jungle life ever again. My hope is that as you heard this message that you never get satisfied with your marriage as it is or your relationships like they are or how you treat people or how people treat you or the unforgiveness or the hurt or the pain or the experiences or the whatever it is that's kept you in hair and settling there. She had a mirror moment and the rest of the story is not totally good.

40:42 She actually was rescued by a group of hunters who ended up trafficking her for a number of years. She gets out of that. And then I think she ended up living the rest of her life in England and had grandkids and lived a very happy life and wrote this book. But my hope, what I was trying to do today was not just preach to you. I just wanted to bring you the thought that whatever it is that you don't like about your life, the part of you that's thinking, this is just the way it's always going to be, doesn't have to be. you don't have to fail speech class you don't have to be inferior you don't have to never amount to anything no the curse can be reversed in jesus name everybody and you can be free and god can do a great work in your life and i want to speak that over you in jesus name i want to say it to you and how do you do it it's in the verse we are being transformed it's a process We're gonna pray today.

41:42 I'm gonna pray for you today. But also, I want you to be back next week, and I want you to get in a small group, and I want you to perhaps get up tomorrow morning and read your Bible and pray and talk to God. That if you'll go through this process of glory to glory, you're gonna notice that your marriage is the best marriage, and your life's the best life, as God works on the inside of you. So let me give you a few thoughts of what that could look like. I'm talking about, like, go all in with God. I'm speaking to every nominal Christian in here, You show up kind of when you feel like it and check that old box and you'll hear spiritual things again next Sunday. No, I'm saying go be an all-in Christian. That's my story. When I finally gave my life to Jesus, I realized I was not satisfied with just being baptized, owning a Bible, and going to church and hearing about hell. I wanted real salvation. Don't be a fake Christian.

42:38 Be the real thing. Go all in with God. By the way, you'll never experience the best of God until you go all in with God, ever. And then the next step of allowing him to touch the issues of your heart, the ones that right now you preferred for nobody to touch. So you're going to heaven, but you're not enjoying the ride there. And you can actually be healed in your heart if you'll allow God to touch that part of your life. I call it finding freedom. But there's even more beyond that. You can actually be a participant in the body of Christ. You can actually, what I call, worship one, serve one. You can find your gift and not just be a spectator, but be in the game of the thing that's called the life of the local church. Like be involved in next steps and find out what it looks like. And don't take my word for it. Talk to somebody who was in the earlier service that is now serving you in this service, and they'll tell you they like the service they serve in more.

43:33 Why? because purpose has replaced their pain. And a new thing got written on their heart. I am a part of the body of Christ. And now I mount this. Are y'all following me, everybody? And your life can actually count for something. And so, Father, I pray for the people today. And I'm asking for healing to take place. And Lord, I pray, God, for every wound, every hurt, every bad experience, every coach, every teacher, every parent who said stuff that just wasn't true, but it hurt and it got written. By the power of the Holy Spirit, I pray, Holy Spirit, erase the bad names. write the new names, I pray, God, on our hearts. As we go through the process of being transformed, grow us.

44:25 As we lean into you and all that you have for us, grow us, I pray, and change us in your image to the full weight, the full potential. Can you receive this? I speak the purpose of God over your marriage and over your life and over your children. God bless the people of God today. in Jesus' name. With your heads bowed, your eyes closed, can I ask you politely, no one looking around for just a moment? And I never like to close a service without giving people a chance to either get saved for the first time or renew your commitment to Christ. I'm not gonna have you stand up. I'm not gonna call you to the front. But I do wanna say something I hope you never forget. You're never gonna be able to do this without the power of God in your life. And he loves you. and if you feel distant from Jesus today, it feels like he's a million miles away, you're a one heartfelt prayer from the barrier of being broken and you getting close with God and then you get his power and his anointing and his spirit.

45:30 And if I just describe what you want, can I pray for you right there in your seat, right there where you are? Again, I'm not gonna call you to the front or make you stand up or anything, But if you want to be involved in that prayer, you're either coming to God for the first time or you're coming back home because he's so far away. Without hesitation, lift your hand as high as you can right now. Say, count me in, count me in. Literally hundreds of hands all across this room. God bless you today. Maybe all online and those that are watching. Church, can we support them right now and all pray aloud? Come on, every voice, let's pray together. Let's say it in full voice. In fact, stand up on your feet, everybody. Let's pray this prayer together. and I want everybody to pray it out loud. Come on in strong voice, say, Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross, paying for my sin, what I did. Today I receive what you did for me by surrendering my life completely to you.

46:30 Come on, say it strong, forgive me. Change me. Come live inside of me. Oh, say it strong, because I believe you are the son of God who rose from the dead and today